A Voice on the Battle Field

I’ve often told co-workers that we need to find evangelists for BI, someone in the business who not only “gets it” but is willing to shout it from the mountain tops about how BI has helped them work smarter. Unfortunately this isn’t always the easiest task to accomplish, as you have to find the right combination of risk taker and analytical thinker.

You might think that you should head straight to the most successful line of business since they are the most visible, but since they are already doing well, they might resist change. On the other side,  the worst performing areas are not a good  candidate either because they might not have time to wait for a solution, and if they are trying to keep their head’s above water they won’t want to take time to learn something new.

Your best bet might be a middle of the road player… someone who isn’t struggling but in the same regard they aren’t killing it either. The middle of the road player is looking for a game-changer, something to make the move to the next level a little easier and BI just might be their ladder to the next step.

Make Friends and Influence People

Early in my career, my manager taught me that sometime you have to “sit on someone’s desk” to get their attention, but in the process you also get to know them because on a face to face visit, verses and email, you will naturally engage in small talk. In one instance I was getting to know one of the marketing managers and he mentioned he was looking for some reporting around his product lines but he wasn’t getting what he needed. I saw this as an opportunity so I started to show him some of the things I had been working on but hadn’t gotten in to production yet. With a little tweaking he was able to get what he needed and it helped him move up the corporate ladder a bit in the long run.

From that point, he became an advocate and when people asked him about his reports he was happy to point them in my direction. Soon we had all the sales office managers using our BI solution, and they were extremely thankful once they adopted the technology and made it part of their daily lives.

Not Just a Flick of the Switch

One of the more delicate points that often gets overlook is the training side of BI adoption. We need to aim to deliver BI solutions that are easy to use and require a minimal amount of training, but that training has to be effective.

With evangelists, it always starts as a one on one session at their desk and I watched how they interacted with the tool. Make note of the questions they asked and the order that they asked them in because it can aid the development of the training materials. After a few of these desk side sessions you need to take your notes, and feedback from your evangelist and start building your training library.

Think about delivery method; should it be a downloadable instructional video, a self guided Power Point presentation or are small group instructor lead session most effective in your organization? Maybe the answer is all three, because if you give them choice on how they are trained they will do what they are most comfortable with in the end.

In the End, it’s All About Showing Value

When it’s all said and done, the value of the BI solution has to be evident. if the evangelist just thinks that his dashboard is cool but it’s not really driving his business what have you really delivered? The more obvious the KPIs and ultimately the value of the solution is to see, the easier the BI adoption will be to achieve.

It’s scary to think about the dollars involved, but with over 70% of Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing projects failing it is surprising to me that more research hasn’t been done it to WHY these projects are dying on the vine. I suppose that in the end, it is just a lot of finger-pointing and bad feelings but I would attribute it with two overarching reasons:

IT developing without business sponsorship or involvement

The business failing to adopt the BI solution once the work is done.

Now the first one bothers me but most IT shops learn from their mistakes and while they didn’t have time to do it right (i.e. work with the business) the you have time to do it over. The second one baffles me, especially if the business has been involved from day one through delivery including the selection of the tools that will be used. Once IT delivers what the business wanted, they don’t use it and the continue to rely on the old way that they always got their numbers before BI was available.

If it Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It

Many users will profess that they are fine doing things the way they have always done them, and just because the executives went out and had a BI solution developed doesn’t mean they have to use it, right? Wrong. While the BI solution may meet the needs to do your day-to-day duties, it’s the analytical power and time savings (hopefully) that will free the user to not only “do their job” but extend themselves to find ways to drive the business forward.

I get it, no one likes change, but the executive team has to help sell BI to their internal teams to help foster adoption of this new way of doing things. The user’s are right, it might not have been broke, and it didn’t need fixing, but there is always room for improvement.

It’s Too Hard! I Can’t Learn How to Do This!

Admittedly, some BI tools can be a challenge to master, and some have a steeper learning curve than others, but executives and IT must work together to train the users to use the tools. Before you choose a tool, did you involve the day-to-day users in the evaluation process? Did you invite them to a demonstration so see their reaction to the tool in use? If not, that may have been your first point of failure. If the user community feel like they had input on the tool selection, they may be more likely to have an open mind in learning and using the tool because it’s the one “they picked”.  Involve the users early and often and adoption and usage rates will rise.

Training can also raise issues with adoption as you have to remember that everyone learns at different paces, with different educational styles. Auditory learners aren’t going to do will with a written manual and kinetic learners are going to get anything out of a lunch and learn unless there are opportunities to get their hands “dirty”. You have to have multiple avenues and styles of training available or you will miss a percentage of your audience every time.

Exposing the Truth, I Think…

The last point might not have anything to do with the BI solution itself, but more with the users and their lack of intimacy with the data. Some people know what they need to see on a report…

“Variance X is within 3% of the budget so I don’t have to worry about it this month…”

Intimate usage of the data involves searching for what might not be visible to the casual user, and because of a lack of deep understanding of the data, there may be a fear of being exposed for not knowing the ins-and-outs of the data like they are suppose to… so if they resist BI, the problem might go away.

This may be harsh, but with the amount of data being produce and reporting today, users can’t function like this anymore, and it may be time to find new analysts.

In the End, You Just Have to Push

Like I said earlier, no one LIKES change, but most people will ACCEPT change if pushed. Some companies fail to take away the “old way of doing things”, but if your BI solution is supposed to replace the old way, then shut down the old system, or at least deny access to it so that users are forced to make a change.

The first time my dad picked up my iPad he could get around with very little instruction. Does it surprise anyone that there are millions of iPads that have been sold to date? If a trained professional isn’t the target audience for your “widget” (i.e. anything from a toaster to a BI application) then it better be easy to use.  How can you expect someone to use something if they are constantly frustrated because they can’t use it efficiently?

Every product goes through a usability testing cycle whether it be a new car, a piece of software or a kitchen appliance. Do you want to know an instant sign of a well-developed product? Next time you buy something, pull it out of the box and start playing with it without reading the directions. Will you know all the advanced functionality? No, but if you can perform 75%-80% of the functions without the directions you are holding a winning product. If the product you are holding isn’t intuitive, chances are it won’t see a lot of use (unless it’s something that you REALLY need to use like a medical device).

Business Intelligence should be no different. Any report, dashboard, or mobile application that is deployed should be so easy to use that it falls under the “Triple Nickle Principle” for user adoption. The Triple Nickle Principle is easy; if you can train a user who is 55 years old (or older) in 5 minutes or less, then you’ve done your job well. So the next time you start developing anything that a user is going to be interfacing with, get their input and make sure it makes sense to them. If it doesn’t make sense then they won’t use it.

During a recent development cycle, I was working on some interactive reports and visualizations using SSRS. In talking with the user I asked him if a certain pattern for a guided drill down and navigation made sense. He looked at me as if that was the first time the question was ever asked of him and replied he “wasn’t sure”. I walked him through the other options of the drill behavior until we came to a solution that made business sense. Which, for the record, was completely different then what the technical or logic path would have been had it been developed in a vacuum.

Here is a quick punch list of things to consider when thinking about usability:

Use of Color? If it’s hard to read, then it’s hard to use. Items to consider include contrast in colors, users who may be color blind and user monitor differences (it might look good on your development monitor, but you should view it in other environments as well.)
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Logical Navigation? If you are moving between screens, does the click path make sense, and are the links obvious?

If it’s a touch screen/mobile app, are the buttons big enough to be easily touched without zooming in?

If it’s a dashboard, do you have “Chart junk”? If you don’t need it to display the meaning of the data, then you don’t need it. Period.

When all else fails, engage the user early in the wire framing of the application/dashboard/app.

These items are the basics, but with a little care and interaction with the user community you can find a happy balance between “cool” and usable.  If you have other ideas, or principles for usability please leave a comment.